Five years after my wife's affair, I'm having second thoughts.

Dear Lauren,

My wife cheated on me four years ago, and I have spent the time since working to reconcile… or have I? We worked through the initial shock during the early days of COVID-19 in 2020, with a few marriage counseling sessions, a lot of discussion about what happened and why, and then we were both forced to work from home.

Since I found out (D-day was Dec. 26, 2019), I have learned a great deal about her… and much of it is NOT good. She claimed that she made a mistake, loved me, wanted the marriage to work and said she would do anything “not to lose her family”. However, her affair partner was a colleague (her boss) and he moved back to the east coast at the same time of discovery and confrontation. She then proceeded to communicate with him for months, hiding DMs and texts on different technology platforms. What she wrote was intimate and longing and she even asked if they could survive the years while she “honored her children and obligations to her marriage”.

Discussions about the affair always ended up in a defensive death-loop of hyper emotional justification and the facts in her narrative shifted from conversation to conversation to the point where I just threw my hands up. Now, almost five years later, I question why I am in this marriage. We are friends and we laugh and talk — never about the affair as the conversations are exhausting and unproductive. I have instigated the conversations from the start: I found the marriage counselor, moved us from the home with the bad memories, researched, read, and listened to vital Podcasts.

But now I wonder if I was so hell-bent to fix things, that issues remain partially, or inadequately, addressed. Did Covid, a new home, a new job, sending the kids off to school, exhaust my spirit for our marriage? Or am I now recognizing the likelihood that the marriage will fail?

Sincerely,
Reconsidering

Dear Reconsidering,

I can empathize with the idea that you went into triage to save your marriage after the revelation of your wife’s affair. Now that the dust has long settled, you have concerns, both about your wife, and about the meaning of the imbalance in those early efforts — concerns that are making you question the authenticity and durability of the reconciliation between you.

Here’s the part of your letter that I want more about, but that you don’t embellish on. You write:

“Since I found out (D-day was Dec. 26, 2019), I have learned a great deal about her… and much of it is NOT good.”

What, exactly, have you learned about your wife since discovery?

And what, exactly, constitutes the majority of it that “is NOT good”?

This sentiment of yours feels to me like the most important trailhead. Walking down it may lead you into honest insights about why you’re having new and shifting sentiments about the marriage.

It’s unfortunately common for two things to be true after an affair: 1) That the unfaithful spouse continues contact with their affair partner in devastating and detrimental ways, and 2) Recovery for a couple takes years, with the affair remaining a wound that, though it heals, leaves a scar.

I wonder what your wife’s explanation was for why she told her affair partner that she was waiting out her marital obligations for the sake of her kids? Was it the affair talking, or was there truth? And if there was truth, how, and why, have her feelings and desires changed since she wrote that?

Those words may have wounded your ability to genuinely trust your wife’s real desire or intention to be with you. Indeed, it’s a knife to the chest to know that, at any time, your spouse considered a relationship with you obligatory.

All of that being said, I want you to assess your feelings about your wife as a person and as your choice of life partner at this current juncture in your lives — as separately as you possibly can from the historical context of her affair. It sounds like you may be the one who is now having a change of heart, and despite the friendship and goodwill you have toward each other (which make for a pleasant and positive family and companionship composition, I’m sure) leave you with deeper concerns that strike at the heart of your marriage.

“Now, almost five years later, I question why I am in this marriage”, you write.

Pause-inducing words, indeed. Now is the time to pay attention to exactly why you’re writing those words.

You’re at a new and different crossroads now, five years later, than the crossroads you faced in the immediate crisis mode of infidelity. With the urgent triage of crisis in the past, you can approach the gestalt of your life, and what you personally want from your life's partnership, with fresh eyes and a clear mind. To the extent that you can evaluate things from that perspective, increased awareness and self-honesty may present itself further. Once it does, you can consider whether approaching your wife with these insights would be helpful in determining a way forward.

With all my love and support,
Lauren